


I planned to move the pollytunnel later in the year and this would then give the bed some more time to surpress the couchgrass and bindweed that would be returning.

Left hand side - Straw bed
Right hand side - there is a big patio door which is way too heavy to move and I don't have a van, so that is staying there till I get my shed from a friend's dad after lockdown.
Moving up I laid down 3 beds with the second lot of cow manure that I had got from Pete the Manure in the March. This had sat at the top of the plot for 5 months. It was still decomposing with lots of compost worms which had taken up residence. Thank you twerms! I asked advice from fellow allotmenteers who said it would be good to grow in even though it was a bit lumpy. They were right!
The toppest area newly cardboarded and covered in the new tarp. This is where I planned for the asparagus bed to go later on.


So I repurposed it into a fleece which has worked well.





- layer one - food waste (fresh, non cooked vegetable and fruit waste not citrus and not onions)
- layer 2 - cover with spent soil from plant pots, or soil
- layer 3 cardboard.
This gives the magic 1/3 green to 1/3 brown that Huw Richards amonght others recommend.
At the lottie I don't want to use the soil as I still have lots of couch grass and bind weed. So my recipe here is food waste (as above), more cardboard and I had some quite tough twigs from some very serious garden pruning of bushes I got rid of this year. It is not an ideal mix but as some of the twigs are quite 'twiggy' then my thinking is that this will be a longer term compost - maybe 2 years? And whilst the ratios are not perfect - Huw Richard said it was better to compost than not and just to get on with it in the first year. So who am I to argue.










RHS - onion sets, stawberries with shallots. This companion planting taken from Grow Veg on YouTube. Funnily enough shallots and strawberries are friends but onions and strawberries are not.
Mid bed peas and salad's that I'd sown indoors and pricked out in March
Left hand side - bottom broad beans grown indoors in loo rolls, romonesco cauliflower under the fleect (again grown from seed and potted on into modules) at the tope of there more onion sets.




2021 The Work Starts
2021 updates from the creation of the new beds, arrival of the mini polytunnel, building of the first compost bin, laying down and planting the new beds. Building and planting the asparagus bed, and the new brassica cage (and yes I know it is too big!).
What I don't have pictures (but I do have a video - coming later) of what the plot was like when I returned in March. The two beds that I had prepared with the cow manure had some couch grass coming back but with half an hour of weeding that was sorted.
With the brassica cage I had been given some netting and found some conduit cable being given away on a wall - so wanted to see if I could make a housing for my brassicas at no cost.
I've put descriptions to most of the pictures so please click on the pictures for the full story.
TOP TIP - If you click on the first picture you can scroll your way through the writings for each of the pictures.
If you are revisiting and want to see what happened next click below. AND if you are a first timer to my site, firstly welcome, and secondly there is a link at the bottom so you can see what happened next.
